A supernova is when a very big star explodes. Supernovae occur only about once every 50 years in a galaxy like our Milky Way.
Interestingly, scientists have just found the youngest known supernova in our galaxy which lies about 28,000 light years away. It is called supernova remnant G1.9+0.3, check it out:
The Phoenix is a spacecraft on a space exploration mission to Mars and it is about to land! The mission has several aims among them are to study water on Mars and search for evidence that life could have existed on the planet.
Interestingly you can follow the progress of the spaceship on the free micro-blogging/social networking service, Twitter. There is also a very interesting video about the mission here.
First of all, check out these large lily shaped disks:
They are solar panels which not only look quite good but could also help reduce a city’s carbon footprint. The proposal has already won the International Design Awards Land and Sea Competition. Read more here.
In other news, a report has come out which claims that wind turbines could generate 300 gigawatts by 2030, which would power about 20 percent of the US electrical grid. All by itself, such a change could reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation (think: coal and natural gas plants) by 25 percent and drop water consumption by four trillion gallons. Read more here.
It seems to me that we already have the technological know-how to massively reduce our carbon emissions, all we need now is to put the ideas into practice.
NASA’s Mars Polar Lander was supposed to land on Mars in 1999 but it is believed that it crashed instead. The Mars Polar Lander was supposed to study the Martian climate as well as soil and ice close to the planet’s south pole. But mission controllers lost contact with the probe when it landed. An investigation suggested it probably smashed onto the surface at high speed because the engines that should have slowed the craft’s descent shut down too quickly. Scientists think that if they can find the Mars Polar Lander, it might provide some clues as to what went wrong.
As a result they have invited the public to look at high-resolution images of Mars for signs of the space craft. So if you are keen to give NASA a hand, or you have had enough of searching for Wally, go here to check out the images. Read more here, here or here.
Scientists are using leftover parts from a telescope to detect dirty bombs, weapons which combine radioactive material with conventional explosives. The recycled telescope once spotted gamma rays streaming from radioactive elements in the sky. Now its technology is being used to detect gamma rays emitted by radioactive substances, such as plutonium, uranium and caesium, which could be used in dirty bombs. NASA are certainly leading the way in reducing, reusing and recycling. Read more here.
Have you ever done something just because your friends did it? Don’t worry, everyone has at some time in their life, it’s called peer group pressure.
Interestingly humans aren’t the only ones who succumb to peer pressure - rats do too. Rats have a tendency to disregard personal experiences and copy the behaviour of their peers. What’s more, the urge to conform appears to be so strong that they will choose to eat food they know to be unpalatable (very yucky) when interacting with other rats that have done the same.
Until now, humans and chimps were the only other animals known to conform in this way. Scientists believe that the discovery emphasises the importance of social learning in the animal kingdom. Read more here.
Australia has some weird animals. For example, the platypus has venom like a reptile, lays eggs like birds and most reptiles, and produces milk to feed it’s young like a mammal. In biology it is classified as a monotreme, a mammal that lays eggs.
We now know more about the platypus than ever before as it’s genome has just been sequenced. That means we know the list of instructions encoded in the animals DNA. Read more here, here or here.
A magnet is a very special metal. When a magnet goes near some other metals or other magnets, it will pull the other metal or magnet closer. That is called magnetism. The most common objects that are attracted to magnets contain iron or steel. Most other metals, including aluminium, are not attracted to magnets. In fact, there are only three magnetic metals they are Iron, Nickel and Cobolt.
The ends of a magnet are called poles. This is where the force of a magnet is the strongest. All magnets have a north pole and a south pole. If a magnet is allowed to spin, then the north pole of a magnet will always point to the north pole of the Earth. The south pole of a magnet will point to earth’s south pole. You can try this yourself by tying a string to a bar magnet and then holding the string so that the magnet can turn.
Magnets are also heaps of fun:
Cosmetics have been around for a long time. More than 4,000 years ago, ancient Egyptians had a variety of beauty aids, including body oils, face creams, perfumes, eye makeup, face paint, hair dyes, and lipstick. Women in ancient Greece applied a white powder to lighten their skin and used powdered charcoal as eye shadow.
These days cosmetics are big business, the worldwide annual expenditures for cosmetics is estimated at U.S. $18 billion. The cosmetic industry is also big science. Most cosmetics contain a combination of at least some of the following ingredients: water, emulsifier, preservative, thickener, colour, fragrance and pH stabilisers.
As an example of some of the science in cosmetics, emulsions are small droplets of oil dispersed in water or small droplets of water dispersed in oil. Since oil and water don’t mix, emulsifiers are added to produce the small droplets and to prevent the oil and water from separating. Emulsifiers work by changing the surface tension between the water and the oil, thus producing a product with an even texture.
I’m not a huge fan of heaps of make-up, especially when people go overboard. Anyway, to learn more go here or here.
A volcano is a mountain where lava (very hot, molten rock) comes from a magma chamber under the ground. Volcanoes are usually made when two tectonic plates move toward each other. When these two plates meet, one of them (usually the ocean plate) goes under the other one. Afterwards, it melts and forms magma (inside the magma chamber), and the pressure builds up until the magma bursts through the Earth’s crust.
A volcano has just erupted in Chile resulting in 4000 people being evacuated, but it also resulted in some amazing photos. Here is one which shows some lightning within the ash clouds of the volcanic eruption:
To see more (35 photos in total) go HERE or read about it here or here.
Construction has begun on the first zero-carbon city, powered entirely by renewable energy. The city, in the United Arab Emirates, will house 50,000 residents and will also include commercial buildings and light industry.
Solar power, in the form of photovoltaic panels, concentrated solar collectors, and solar thermal tubes will provide 82% of the city’s energy needs. An additional 17% of the city’s power will come from burning composted food waste in a highly efficient method that developers say will emit greenhouse gases at a rate 10 times lower than if the food were allowed to decompose in a landfill. The remaining 1% of the city’s energy will come from wind turbines. Read more here.
This is a cool feature for a laptop computer … a see through screen:
It’s amazing what computers can do …. unfortunately it is a fake. The video was made using the bluescreen video effect which is a technique for mixing two images together.
A launch site is the area and facilities where rockets or spacecrafts liftoff. Launch Complex 40 is located at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (here it is in Google maps) in the US.
This is what recently happened to launch complex 40:
Don’t be alarmed. It wasn’t an accident the launch site was intentionally demolished. The demolition of the obsolete launch complex makes room for the new Falcon 9 launch pad being built there by private company SpaceX.
A chemical element, or element, is a type of atom that is distinguished by its atomic number; that is, by the number of protons in its nucleus. The elements are all displayed in the periodic table.
For example hydrogen has 1 proton in its nucleus, carbon has 6 protons in its nucleus and oxygen has 8 protons in its nucleus. 94 different elements occur naturally on Earth although a total of 117 have been observed, with the last 23 being made by scientists.
Physicists use accelerators to synthesize larger, heavier elements. Unfortunately they are very unstable and split apart almost as soon as they are made. In 2006, physicists in the United States and Russia created element 118, Ununoctium. It lasted for a little under a millisecond before splitting itself into lighter atoms.
Now some scientists believe they have found element 122 on earth without making it in a laboratory. Read more here or here.
What do you think this element should be called?
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